Content Startups

Medium is a blogging platform founded by Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter and founder of Blogger, designed for posts of medium length—neither too short nor too long. The platform represents Williams' return to his first love of enabling real-time connectivity and conversation after his tenure as Twitter CEO. No specific traction metrics or revenue data are provided in this podcast episode description.

The CMO Podcast, hosted by Jim Stengel (former P&G Global Marketing Officer), is a show featuring interviews with marketing leaders about modern brand marketing. The podcast is produced by Wondery and has achieved distribution on major platforms including Amazon, with episodes recorded in front of live audiences at industry events like Cannes Lions.

Dude Perfect started as a side project by Texas A&M students in the mid-2000s who posted trick shot videos on YouTube. After their first video went viral on Good Morning America, they spent five years building ad revenue and brand deals while working day jobs before committing fulltime in 2014. Today, their YouTube channel has more subscribers than the NBA, NFL, and NHL combined, and they've expanded into books, TV, live events, and a robust entertainment platform.

Rick Steves built a travel empire starting with self-published guidebooks and budget travel classes after backpacking Europe on $2/day. He grew the business through minibus tours and a Public TV travel show, giving away most content while building a powerful no-frills brand. By 2024, the company generated $120M in annual revenue with 70 guidebooks and a popular ongoing travel show.

Khan Academy is a free, non-profit educational platform founded by Sal Khan in 2009 that offers hundreds of tutorials in fifty languages. Starting from helping cousins with math homework, Khan posted tutorials on YouTube which went viral, eventually reaching 170 million monthly global users and becoming one of the world's most trusted teaching tools.

Zero to Sold is a book sold on Gumroad with accompanying podcast content. The author promotes the book through a podcast and offers promotional discount codes like 'bf20' for Black Friday sales.

The Forever Transaction is a Twitter course focused on building a following. The project is promoted through podcast sponsorships and video content distribution on YouTube.

Khe Hy is the founder of Rad Reads and the Examined Life podcast, a content-driven venture exploring themes of success, happiness, and personal fulfillment. The project operates as a podcast and newsletter focused on introspective conversations about lifestyle design, mental health, and authenticity. Khe's content strategy leverages multiple platforms including Twitter, a podcast feed, blog, and newsletter to build an audience around personal development and self-examination.

The Bootstrapped Founder is a content-driven platform featuring Arvid Kahl's podcast, blog, and newsletter that focuses on entrepreneur advice and bootstrapping strategies. Rather than a traditional product, it serves as a media property distributing educational content about finding passion-driven business opportunities by solving problems for communities you care about.

Tracy Osborn is a design educator and founder of Hello Web Design, a resource for teaching design fundamentals to startup founders. She has published books on web design and app development, including Hello Web App, and discusses the pros and cons of self-publishing versus traditional publishing.

Examine.com is a content-driven website built on scientific research about supplements and health topics that grew to millions of views per month. Sol Orwell built the site to 10,000 paying subscribers by differentiating on research-backed information and building trust through transparency. The site experienced significant challenges including a Google penalty but has maintained a strong presence through content marketing and customer interviews.

MicroConf's State of Independent SaaS Survey is a community-driven research initiative focused on indie-funded SaaS founders. The annual report provides benchmarks, insights, and best practices to level the playing field between bootstrapped and venture-funded SaaS businesses. It leverages the indie SaaS community to gather data and create actionable intelligence for independent founders.

Dr. Sherry Walling released a book titled 'Touching Two Worlds: A guide for finding hope in the landscape of loss' through a traditional publisher. The book addresses grief in entrepreneurship and guides readers through loss recovery. Walling employed strategic promotional tactics including reframed cold outreach and founder psychology hacking to drive book launches and awareness.

Financial Samurai is one of the longest-running and most popular personal finance blogs, founded by Sam Dogen over 13 years ago. Sam has personally written over 2,500 essays and published a Wall Street Journal Bestselling book, building a lifestyle business focused on helping people achieve financial freedom through relentless content execution.

Tom Merritt is a prolific content creator who hosts multiple podcasts including Daily Tech News Show, which has been running consistently for 10 years. He went independent in 2013 and was an early adopter of Patreon, building a sustainable business around creating daily content with discipline and process. Tom uses tools like ElevenLabs for his workflow and maintains a remarkable streak of consistent daily publishing without missing episodes.

The SaaS Playbook is a book and educational content product by Rob Walling that covers SaaS business fundamentals. Rob discusses the sales channel breakdown and learnings from the book launch in a podcast episode, emphasizing the importance of motivation over mere access to information for developers in the AI era.

Rob and Dr. Sherry Walling launched 'Exit Strategy: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Selling Your Business Without Regret,' a book addressing the emotional and practical challenges of exiting a business. The book is live on Kickstarter and draws on their combined experience mentoring founders through exits.

Adam Wathan built Refactoring UI into a wildly successful business by teaching others through free content and courses. A college dropout turned software engineer, he leveraged content marketing and audience building to drive millions of dollars in demand for his books and courses.

The Hustle is a media company built by Sam Parr that generates 8 figures in annual revenue from newsletter advertising. The business demonstrates the power of email marketing, great copywriting, and relentless experimentation in building a profitable content business without unnecessary technical complexity.

Coder Coder is a collection of resources helping self-taught web developers learn to code. Jessica Chan grew her Instagram presence to 30k followers and her website to over 60k visits per month through content marketing. She plans to monetize the business as an indie hacker.